Social Work at the Movies

Here is a link to the trailer for Jim Loach's film Oranges and Sunshine, about a Nottingham social worker's investigation of the forced migration of UK childen to Australia, and her work to release information leading to the reuniting of separated families. The film opens in the UK on 1st April.

Munro Interim Report pulished

The second report to come out of the Munro review of child protection, Interim report : Munro, E. (2011)the child's journey, set up in the wake of the Baby P serious case reviews, was published yesterday. In this report Professor Munro's report outlines where the child protection system needs reform and calls for children's needs to be in the forefront of consideration rather than meeting managerial targets and compliance with bureaucracy which have hindered social workers in using their professional judgement. The report also recommends making it easier for other agancies to access social workers for advice and improving the system of serious case review to enable greater information sharing and learning nationally in such cases.
Also reported on in the Guardian, 1 January 2011.

Avoiding mistakes in child protection

The NSPCC have released a a new guide on risk assessment in child protection:
Broadhurst, K.et al. (2011). Ten pitfall and how to avoid them: what research tells us. NSPCC. The authors state that no amount of micro managing procedural guidelines can substitute for the decision making processes professional social workers engage in every day, but hope in this document to help professionals avoid the more common mistakes identified by research. This document is an update of an original included in the 1998 NSPCC report Assessing Risk in Child Protection.

Sexual expolitation of children in Britain

This weeks news has seen much coverage and opinion on the nature and causes of child sexual exploitation, following Jack Straws remarks typifying young Asian men as perpetrators and white girls as victims. The charity Barnardo's has for many years been running projects in Britain to help young people who find themselves victims of this type of crime. Anne Marie Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo's stated in the Guardian, 17 January that such stereotyping is unhelpful, and that what is actually required is for sexual exploitation to be addressed as a child protection issue, with a national action plan, earlier identification and more robust evidence gathering and prosecution procedures to help protect children and punish offenders. Barnardo's published their report Puppet on a string: the urgent need to cut children free from sexual exploitation this week.

How can self funders find good care services?

This month SCIE published People who pay for care: quantitative and qualitative analysis of self-funders in the social care market. This report found that people who have to fund their own care often lack good quality information to enable them to make an informed choice, particularily when their need arise due to a rapid change in circumstances. People who self fund will often not have access to an independent assessment of their needs and the only advice they receive from their local council can be a list of care homes in the area.
More comment on this is available from Melanie Henwood, author of one of the studies in the above report, in the Guardian 18 January.

Human rights in adult care

THe Scottish Human Rights Commision has produced an interactive training resource for people working in elder care. This package can be accessed via this link to the library subscribed CareKnowledge .

Scottish Prison Statistics

The Scottish Government have released data for 2009-10 on the Scottish Prison Population including information on admissions by gender, age, ethnicity and length of sentence.
Scottish Government. (2010). Prison statistics Scotland: 2009-10.